What have you done to my beautiful self?

(SPOILERS) Probably the most charitable thing one can say about Maleficent is that it’s inoffensive.
Except to Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent
that is, who would likely take great exception to being thoroughly debased as a
sentimentalist with a warmest of hearts beneath the cruelty and darkness.
Whatever next, a cuddly Shere Khan? It might be its bland innocuousness that
explains Maleficent’s unlikely
success (it’s 2014’s third most popular movie worldwide), that and an evident (hitherto
untapped) appetite for female-led fantasy movies. Parents probably didn’t mind
taking their kids to a picture that wasn’t especially scary, didn’t last all
that long, and had an easily graspable moral wedged in there (and, “It’s a love story between a mother and
daughter”). But looking for reasons for its success can’t explain away that
this is another empty big budget fantasy among a glut of late. There isn’t an
ounce of filmmaking verve or passion, not a jot of storytelling drive, not a
mote of genuine drama or conflict, or even any decent comic relief (a Disney
failsafe).The case for the defence? The
cinematography is quite nice (if generic) and Angelina Jolie at least looks the
part.

Ah yes, the look. I was surprised to hear that Maleficent was in development prior to
Jolie’s involvement. Throughout (what seems like) a long period of development
hell the one thing that seemed evident more than anything else was this was a classic
example of wrong-footed reverse engineering. Some suits saw Jolie’s perfect
bone structure, connected it to the Sleeping
Beauty villainess, and bingo, there’s a movie. It didn’t matter that there
was no story, less still that the character was evil. Maleficent looks cool. So
the only option, once you wade into the pool of basing movie-making decisions
on iconography alone, is that she becomes a good gal wronged. There’s the
lesson to anyone hoping to see a Boba Fett movie. Even when there is back-story, delving into it tends to
be doomed to failure. Didn’t anyone see what happened when they tried to
explain Darth Vader?

That’s not to say there aren’t strong themes or isn't memorable imagery
in the picture, but they fall flat where they aren’t relying on Sleeping Beauty itself. The evil
Maleficent is basically sandwich filler, the wherefores and whys usurping what
Jolie rightly references as a “deliciously
evil” character. If she likes the character that much, she surely wouldn’t
have become interested in “What on Earth
happened to her that she would be so angry that she would curse an innocent?”

The clear-cut fairy tale transforms into a rocky yarn about a winged faerie
living in an idyllic realm who is cruelly violated by her former human beau,
gets thunderous and moody for a bit (but not really all that), and then makes
up with everyone. It’s ironic that Jolie wanted to retain the crucial curse
dialogue from the 1959 film when its tangent is oppositional to the current telling. After all, therein
Maleficent dies when a man (a dashing prince) pierces her heart with his
mighty sword (if you’re looking for sexual metaphors).

Here Sharlto Copley makes for a one-note King Stefan (like
his District 9 director, he becomes
less impressive the more exposure he gets), served with utterly incoherent
motivation. Suffice to say he becomes a materialist and the childhood
attraction he felt towards Maleficent fizzles. We know this because the
narration (Janet McTeer doing a commanding job; she almost makes it feel
classical and worthwhile at times, but only almost) keeps stopping us to fill
in the gaps. I almost have a grudging admiration for the how overtly the
picture relies on telling rather than showing, and how utterly reliant it is on
McTeer’s older Aurora to make sense of the story.

So, to impress his father (to
prove he is a man), he cuts off Maleficent’s wings and so inspires her turn to darkness. Metaphorically, as a number of critics have noted, Stefan rapes Maleficent. However, I'm not overly persuaded by arguments for the picture's merits on the basis on of one scene's subtext. Not when the rest of the movie is so lacking. Later, Maleficent's lost wings miraculously reattachment themselves without so much as a roll of double sided sticky tape. If we're looking
for unvarnished metaphors, the humans live in a Tolkien-Mordor-esque industrialised
and despoiled world, and a patriarchal one to boot, whereas the bounteous land of
the Moor is presided over by feminine energy.

Short of getting Neil Jordan in to pep this up thematically
and content-wise, I doubt anything could have saved Maleficent. Yet the picture clearly connected with families on some
level. I mean to say, I couldn’t even accuse it of being overtly maudlin or
sentimental. Jolie occasionally gets behind the menace of her character, and
her cut glass English accent matches her cheekbones, but even as she gets
behind her character’s regret for her deeds she laudably resists amping up the
sympathy. Elle Fanning is irritatingly chirpy throughout as Aurora. She just
can’t quit with that nauseating smiling, which may mean she’s playing for wholesomeness
or it may mean her character is a metaphor for over-prescription of mood
altering pharmaceuticals to teenagers.

The comic relief of Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville and
Juno Temple as feckless fairies falls flat, and their character design, big
heads on small bodies, borrows some of the least attractive design characteristics
of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.
Sam Riley is solid as the well-meaning crow-come-human Diaval. The moment where
Maleficent first transforms him, and he swells from bird to man beneath a
hunter’s net, is one of the very few moments in the picture that is creepy,
imaginative and unsettling; the way a good fairy tale should be

(metamorphoses into different creatures - including a dragon - ought to be thrilling, but they're disappointingly flat)

Dean Semler’s cinematography is fine, but this is yet another
CGI world of shiny pixels and no substance (like Alice, like Oz). Debut director Robert Stromberg may
have made an impression as production designer on Avatar, Alice and Oz, but he has been imbued with none of
the craft and energy of those filmmakers. Maleficent
maintains a deathly torpor. It has no zest (the laughs aren’t funny) and no
excitement (more pixels attacking each other). Stromberg likes his widescreen,
but he doesn’t inhabit it; we’re treated to little more than a series of vistas
between McTeer informing us what happens next. As for James Newton Howard’s
score, it’s forgettable when it isn’t insisting on a sub-Danny Elfman choral
ethereality. Rick Baker’s make up for Jolie is fine, but just about everything
else is familiar and forgettable.

Linda Woolverton, who slew another great children’s story
with Burton’s Alice, repeats the
trick here. Hollywood seems to like her though, so she’s sequelising Alice next. Just what was required.
Apparently she went through 15 drafts of the Maleficent script, so God knows how bad it was initially. The only
memorable dialogue comes from the original Disney animation; how undernourished
is a screenplay when the protagonist/antagonist warns, “It’s over” to the villain, straight out of a contemporary action
movie?

The occasional reversal works; for example, having true love’s kiss come
from Aurora’s surrogate mother rather than Brendan Thwaites’ sub-boy band
prince. But the emotional beats are undeveloped so none of them play; why
Stefan is such a bastard, why Maleficent develops affection for Aurora, why
Aurora develops affection for Maleficent. It is so because McTeer tells us it
is so.

If Maleficent
comes across as a truncated and diced-up affair, that may be because it is.
Hence the narration. Yet there’s little sense that we’ve lost vital parts of the
story, as nothing therein feels vital. Miranda Richardson and Peter Capaldi
were excised as the fairy queen and king of the Moors, which on the one hand is
a shame as the picture desperately needed some good meaty thesping. On the
other it would have extended a lifeless picture’s running time further.

It isn’t difficult to see why Brad Bird, Tim Burton and
David Yates all passed on the project. There’s no meat on Maleficent’s bones, no emotional pulse and absolutely nothing that
is deliciously cruel. What we have is the latest in a line of sub-par fairy and
fantasy retellings, Last year’s Oz
and Jack the Giant Slayer were as
inert as this is, but didn’t do nearly as well (Jolie at least has presence;
the leads in those two were nigh on inconspicuous). Snow White and the Hunstman was as misconceived as Maleficent, but at least benefited from
some strong supporting actors and a first time director who, unlike here, came
across as if he had something to prove. The worst aspect of Maleficent is that its success rivals Alice in Wonderland in the “That’ll do”
stakes. Someone really needs to try harder, but the only place where this is
happening is in animated features. At least Disney fairy tales can still be
trusted in their natural habitat.

Get link

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Other Apps

Get link

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Other Apps

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vampire Academy (2014) My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on
the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct
Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire
Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if
you added vampires to Heathers, you
would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately
inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from
Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish
leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to
surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young
Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel
storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation
crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like,
hoping…

Russian Doll Season One (SPOILERS) It feels like loading the dice to proclaim something necessarily better because it’s female-driven, but that’s the tack The Hollywood Reporter took with its effusive review of Russian Doll, suggesting “although Nadia goes on a similar journey of self-discovery to Bill Murray’s hackneyed reporter in Groundhog Day, the fact that the show was created, written by and stars women means that it offers up a different, less exploitative and far more thoughtful angle” (than the predominately male-centric entries in the sub-genre). Which rather sounds like Rosie Knight changing the facts to fit her argument. And ironic, given star Natasha Lyonne has gone out of her way to stress the show’s inclusive message. Russian Dollis good, but the suggestion that “unlike its predecessors (it) provides a thoughtfulness, authenticity and honesty which makes it inevitable end (sic) all the more powerful” is cobblers.

Out of Africa (1985) I did not warm to Out of Africa on my initial viewing, which would probably have been
a few years after its theatrical release. It was exactly as the publicity
warned, said my cynical side; a shallow-yet-bloated, awards-baiting epic
romance. This was little more than a well-dressed period chick flick, the
allure of which was easily explained by its lovingly photographed exotic vistas
and Robert Redford rehearsing a soothing Timotei advert on Meryl Streep’s distressed
locks. That it took Best Picture only seemed like confirmation of it as
all-surface and no substance. So, on revisiting the film, I was curious to see
if my tastes had “matured” or if it deserved that dismissal.

Roma (2018)
(SPOILERS) Roma is a critics' darling and a shoe-in for Best Foreign Film Oscar, with the potential to take the big prize to boot, but it left me profoundly indifferent, its elusive majesty remaining determinedly out of reach. Perhaps that's down to generally spurning autobiographical nostalgia fests – complete with 65mm widescreen black and white, so it's quite clear to viewers that the director’s childhood reverie equates to the classics of old – or maybe the elliptical characterisation just didn't grab me, but Alfonso Cuarón's latest amounts to little more than a sliver of substance beneath all that style.

Split (2016) (SPOILERS) M Night Shyamalan went from the toast of twist-based
filmmaking to a one-trick pony to the object of abject ridicule in the space of
only a couple of pictures: quite a feat. Along the way, I’ve managed to miss several
of his pictures, including his last, The
Visit, regarded as something of a re-locating of his footing in the low
budget horror arena. Split continues
that genre readjustment, another Blumhouse production, one that also manages to
bridge the gap with the fare that made him famous. But it’s a thematically
uneasy film, marrying shlock and serious subject matter in ways that don’t
always quite gel.

Shyamalan has seized on a horror staple – nubile teenage
girls in peril, prey to a psychotic antagonist – and, no doubt with the best
intentions, attempted to warp it. But, in so doing, he has dragged in themes
and threads from other, more meritable fare, with the consequence that, in the
end, the conflicting positions rather subvert his attempts at subversion…

Django Unchained (2012) (MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has
regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at
very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django
Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a
director in Kill Bill), I was
pleasantly surprised by Inglourious
Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in
its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular
protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic.
As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was
operating at his zenith. Django Unchained
is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his
all-important aesthetic pr…

Starship Troopers (1997) (SPOILERS) Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi trio of Robocop, Total Recall and Starship Troopers are frequently claimed to be unrivalled in their genre, but it’s really only the first of them that entirely attains that rarefied level. Discussion and praise of Starship Troopers is generally prefaced by noting that great swathes of people – including critics and cast members – were too stupid to realise it was a satire. This is a bit of a Fight Club one, certainly for anyone from the UK (Verhoeven commented “The English got it though. I remember coming out of Heathrow and seeing the posters, which were great. They were just stupid lines about war from the movie. I thought, ‘Finally someone knows how to promote this.’”) who needed no kind of steer to recognise what the director was doing. And what he does, he does splendidly, even if, at times, I’m not sure he entirely sustains a 129-minute movie, since, while both camp and OTT, Starship Troopers is simultaneously required t…

Prediction 2019 Oscars Shockingly, as in I’m usually much further behind, I’ve missed out on only one of this year’s Best Picture nominees– Vice isn’t yet my vice, it seems – in what is being suggested, with some justification, as a difficult year to call. That might make for must-see appeal, if anyone actually cared about the movies jostling for pole position. If it were between Black Panther and Bohemian Rhapsody (if they were even sufficiently up to snuff to deserve a nod in the first place), there might be a strange fascination, but Joe Public don’t care about Roma, underlined by it being on Netflix and stillconspicuously avoided by subscribers (if it were otherwise, they’d be crowing about viewing figures; it’s no Bird Box, that’s for sure).

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) (SPOILERS) There’s a groundswell of opinion that Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation is the
best in near 20-year movie franchise. I’m not sure I’d go quite that far, but
only because this latest instalment and its two predecessors have maintained
such a consistently high standard it’s difficult to pick between them. III featured a superior villain and an
emotional through line with real stakes. Ghost
Protocol dazzled with its giddily constructed set pieces and pacing.
Christopher McQuarrie’s fifth entry has the virtue of a very solid script, one
that expertly navigates the kind of twists and intrigue one expects from a spy
franchise. It also shows off his talent as a director; McQuarrie’s not one for
stylistic flourish, but he makes up for this with diligence and precision. Best
of all, he may have delivered the series’ best character in Rebecca Ferguson’s
Ilsa Faust (admittedly, in a quintet that makes a virtue of pared down motivation
and absen…

Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) (SPOILERS) The zeitgeist Best Picture Oscar winner is prone to falling from grace like no other. Often, they’re films with notable acting performances but themes that tend to appear antiquated or even slightly offensive in hindsight. Few extol the virtues of American Beauty the way they did twenty years ago, and Kramer vs. Kramer isn’t quite seen as exemplifying a sensitive and balanced examination of the fallout of divorce on children and their parents the way it was forty years previously. It remains a compelling film for the performances, but it’s difficult not to view it, despite the ameliorating effect of Meryl Streep (an effect she had to struggle to exert), as a vanity project of its star, and one that doesn’t do him any favours with hindsight and behind-the-scenes knowledge.